BURT CONSULTANTS
Journal

Field notes & sector briefings.

Thinking we've put on the page — on AI in the workplace, leadership, and the engineering that makes both stick. Plus the latest briefings, organised by sector.

Data Stack Featured

Archaeology of the data stack

Cron from 2010, dbt from 2020, dashboards on top — the joins held together by one person's memory. Every data stack is the receipts of past constraints.

datainfrastructuredbt
9 min read
More field notes
Note

Welcome to the Burt Consultants journal

A new home for our thinking on AI, leadership, and the engineering that makes both stick.

announcements
1 min read
AI Implementation

Why AI pilots stall — and the boring middle that makes them work

Most AI pilots don't fail at the model. They fail at the unglamorous integration work everyone tries to skip.

aileadership
3 min read
Explore

Briefings by sector

Security & Governance

Risk, compliance, regulation, and safe AI deployment.

39 briefings Explore →

AI Infrastructure

Cloud, MLOps, platform engineering, and the systems that run AI.

21 briefings Explore →

Marketing & SEO

Search, content, conversion, and how AI changes customer acquisition.

17 briefings Explore →

Agentic AI

AI agents, MCP, copilots, and the automation of knowledge work.

16 briefings Explore →

Leadership & Capital

Fractional C-suite, transformation, investment, and capital markets.

14 briefings Explore →

AI Engineering

AI-assisted coding, SaaS delivery, refactoring, and software quality.

6 briefings Explore →
Latest on the wire

Recent briefings.

Briefing

The CRO in 2026: a real option for distressed entities

The chief restructuring officer role, with clear governance and authority, is becoming an international standard for the turnaround of distressed entities.

restructuringchief restructuring officerturnarounddistressed
2 min read
Briefing

Assembling a cost-efficient AI infrastructure stack layer by layer.

Spheron maps AI infrastructure into seven layers. Understanding each layer helps teams buy only what they need and avoid duplicating capabilities.

aiinfrastructurearchitecturecost
2 min read
Briefing

Zip's procurement Superagents: a case study in governance-first AI.

Zip's five AI Superagents show how procurement automation can work without breaking role-based permissions or audit trails.

aigovernanceprocurementmcp
3 min read
Briefing

AI Overviews cut top-ranking CTR: what to do about it

Ahrefs data shows that when a Google AI Overview appears, the top-ranking page's click-through rate drops by 34.5%. Marketers need a different definition of success.

ai overviewsctrseogoogle search
2 min read
Briefing

Microsoft Build 2026: a CIO's guide to the new agent stack.

Microsoft Build 2026 unveiled a full agent stack: Agent Platform, Work IQ, Agent 365 governance and Scout always-on agents. CIOs now have to decide how these pieces fit into an enterprise architecture.

aigovernancemicrosoftenterprise
3 min read
Briefing

Google's AI search guide: what it debunks and what it doesn't.

Google's AI optimisation guide confirms that optimising for generative AI search inside Google Search is still SEO. But it also leaves several strategic questions open.

googleai searchseo
2 min read

View all briefings →